The Anniversary
by JacquiT
Summary: Nick and Catherine share a significant anniversary.


Submitted for the 8th Nick Fic Song Challenge at TalkCSI. The song was Angel by Sarah McLachlan. The usual applies - warm fuzzies only, etc. and so on. Enjoy, if you care to, and I love reviews! Thanks for reading!

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"I thought I'd find you here."

Nick Stokes was not surprised to hear the voice of Catherine Willows as she sidled up next to him. "Hey, Cath."

"Those are nice," she said of the flowers that sat at his feet. They were no sickly gas-station variety roses, either – twelve bright white roses were bundled together with baby's breath and greenery, wrapped delicately in tissue paper and tied with a ribbon. "Kinda girly, though."

Nick chuckled. "I knew you'd forget," he drawled. Wordlessly, he reached into a paper bag sitting at his side with his right hand, and extracted a beer bottle very like the one he held in his left hand.

Catherine accepted it with a smile. "You're getting to know me a little too well, I think," she said as she sat down next to him on the cold cement slab. He wrapped an arm around her, and she allowed herself to be pulled in close.

"We've been through a lot together," he replied as he rested his cheek on top of her head. They were quiet a long moment, neither of them inclined to say anything. For a good five minutes they sat, cuddled contentedly, sipping beer and mulling over flowers.

It was an odd picture they painted. For all the world they could have been a romantic couple sitting on a park bench watching swans float by and feeling a cool breeze tousle their hair. However, they were not romantically involved and they were not in a park. They were in an alleyway behind a handful of slightly-suspect businesses – the bar for its clientele, the diner for its food.

Both Nick and Catherine could have pointed out the exact spot where, one year ago, they arrived to the scene of an officer-involved shooting to find the officer, their friend and colleague, laying on the ground outside of his car, dead. Nick could still remember Catherine arriving with an anxious expression on her face, and it broke his heart to think of how it had hurt to shake his head at her. He couldn't speak at the time. To this day, when he thought of it, he still couldn't speak.

Losing Warrick had been the most pain Nick had ever felt. It wasn't that Nick had never lost anyone near and dear to his heart before – he had a huge family and all four of his grandparents, and even some of his aunts and uncles, had already passed on. He'd been close especially to his father's father, and when he died Nick was only sixteen. Being a pretty sheltered kid, as well as being of a tender age, Nick had been devastated and confused and had grieved with his body – through his chores on the ranch, extra work in the stables, on the baseball field, the football field, the track, and even the golf course.

When Warrick died his grieving process had been similar, only he replaced sports and chores with work and more work. He could hardly believe it had already been a year.

"Hear from Grissom lately?"

"No," replied Catherine quietly, taking a draw off her beer bottle. "He's too focused on what he's doing. I'm assuming he's fine unless we hear from Sara."

Nick chuckled. "You're probably right," he said, and took a swig from his own bottle. They were quiet a moment longer, each of them looking around the alleyway, trying not to imagine the blood pool or Dave Phillips' devastated face or Grissom's stained clothing.

"You been to see Eli yet?"

Catherine smiled. "Yeah," she said. "You?"

"Yeah," he replied. "I see him every couple of weeks. He's a sweet kid."

Catherine sat up. "I was terrified to look at him," she admitted. "I thought . . . if he looks too much like Warrick . . . I didn't know what I'd do."

"He does look like Warrick."

"Yeah . . . down to those big green eyes." She drank again and then turned to look at Nick. "You see him every couple of weeks?"

Nick nodded.

"Why?"

"I want to be a part of his life," Nick replied, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "When I told Grissom, he told me I needed to move on. He suggested – like Grissom does – that I might be replacing Warrick with Eli."

Catherine was quiet for a moment before she asked, "Do you think you are?"

Nick looked at Catherine. "No," he replied, only a little offended. "Catherine, Warrick was fallin' apart. His marriage failed, he didn't believe that Eli was even his – and then the whole mess with Gedda and McKeen. When he's old enough, he deserves to know the truth about what happened to his dad from someone who knows the truth – that his father was a good man who believed in good things." Nick turned away from Catherine and shook his head.

"That's a long time from now," said Catherine, her eyes round.

Nick shrugged. "I'm a patient man."

Catherine played with her beer bottle. "Is that really for Eli?"

"A little," Nick admitted. "It gives me some peace. But really . . . I think it's for Warrick. It wasn't fair, the way he died. . . ." He rose and walked the few paces to the place on the floor of the filthy alley where his best friend had taken his last breath. "It wasn't fair."

There was silence again in the dark night as Catherine pondered this. "Do you think he's at peace?"

"I think the concept of heaven is a god damned joke if he's not." He turned to Catherine, still sitting on the cement slab. "Are you at peace?"

"I don't know," she replied honestly. "Sometimes I think I am and then . . . I find myself wondering about what I could have done to stop it."

Nick walked over to her and held out his hand. When she took it, he pulled her to her feet and met her unflinching eyes. "But you know there isn't anything. You know that, right?"

She smiled sadly. "I do," she replied, and he believed her. "It just . . . sucks."

He chuckled a little and raised his beer bottle; she clinked it with her own, and they both emptied them. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"You got it, Nicky."

He stepped toward the cement slab to pick up the brown paper bag that held the remainder of the six-pack and placed the empties into it. Then he knelt to pick up the roses.

"Those really are beautiful," said Catherine, as she waited for him to place them on the asphalt.

Nick regarded them a moment. "I got a better idea," he said suddenly, and put down the roses and the brown paper bag. He took another longneck from the bag and twisted the top off, and then walked back to the place in the alley that the roses were intended to lay. Then he emptied the contents of the bottle onto the ground.

"Warrick liked beer," he said by way of explanation to the confused Catherine. Then he placed the empty bottle back in the bag and picked up the roses. "You like roses."

With a teary smile Catherine took the flowers from his extended hand. "Thanks, Nicky." Hand in hand, they left the alley with an angel smiling in their wake.

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(c) 2009 J. H. Thompson


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